


Second Watch under a Midnight Sky

by sockablock



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Bonding Moments, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Gen, More tags to come!, Team as Family, all carried over from my tumblr, cause the hellsite be burnin'
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-07 14:48:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16855993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sockablock/pseuds/sockablock
Summary: They were seated in the grass next to a slow campfire, sharing the evening's second watch under a starry sky. Smoke curled up from dry-burning logs, and the far-off chirp of a cricket hummed low through the quiet night.(or: A collection of short drabbles featuring off-screen, canon-adjacent character and relationship studies)





	1. Before a Meager Fire (Caleb & Nott)

**Author's Note:**

> Set before these two meet up with the m9, on a quiet night during their many-month post-prisonbreak conning spree

“Caleb?” Nott asks one night as they sit before a meager fire. “You know how you do all that stuff with magic, all the time?”

Caleb scritches Frumpkin’s ears soothingly, raises an eyebrow without looking up. “Er...yes?”

"Right!" she nods enthusiastically. "And you’re  _really_  good at it, too! Like, I’ve seen you make people do whatever you say, and you can make those little glowing lights, and you can see what Frumpkin sees, and once I saw you set a whole tree on fire!”

He winces slightly at the memory, from a spell that had gone just a bit too far to the left. He pets his cat a bit more pointedly. “Those…those  _are_  all things that I have done,” he concedes. "Why do you bring this up?"

"Well..." she hesitates, "well, I’ve also seen you do that thing where you change wood into stone, or copper pieces to silvers. You know what I'm talking about, right?”

He cracks a faint smile at this. “ _Ja_ , certainly.”

“Right, right, and it’s a really neat spell! And I was...just sort of wondering...if you could, well I mean, if, if maybe you could—"

He glances curiously at her, and she cuts off mid-sentence. She lowers her head and stares at her hands.

His heart softens, just a bit. “What is it,  _dreckspatz_?” 

Then Nott’s head jerks up. Her face meets his, and suddenly he can see the tears down her cheeks, the quiver of her lips, her pupils, thin like needles, eyes panicked and wanting and _desperate,_ shining slow in the firelight.

“Can you change  _me_?” she whispers.

He freezes.

For a moment, silence. The embers crackle on.

Then Nott ducks back down. Her fingers tap erratically against her knees, she fiddles anxiously with her bandages.

“I’m sorry, I'm sorry, that was a stupid question, I shouldn’t have—“

“Is that what you want?”

Her head snaps up. Caleb's face is expressionless, which Nott has now learned means a million thoughts are currently vying for his attention behind the mask.

“Nott, is that what you _really_ want?” he asks again.

She chuckles darkly. Her answer lives in the faintest breath. “More than  _anything._ ”

He puts his head into his hands, dislodging a disgruntled Frumpkin.

“Then...yes." He sighs. "That is...that is something I can do.”

Her eyes instantly go wide. “You _can_? Really? Will you do it now?”

Caleb chuckles, gives her a soft smile. “I can’t do it  _yet_ ,” and here Nott’s ears drop slightly, “but I can learn."

She perks up. "You can?"

"You’ve watched me copy spells into my book, _ja_?”

She nods.

His smile grow. “Then all we have to do is find the spell. And then I will learn it, and do this for you.”

She's upright in a second, bare feet streaking through the grass, barreling into Caleb’s arms. He starts, almost flinches, but as her arms wrap around his waist, he recovers enough to pat her on the back.

“Oh, thank you, Caleb," she sobs, "thank you _, thank you, thank you_ …”

And as he continues to soothe her, helps shift her carefully off his lap, he feels a heavy weight sinking into his stomach. There is so much he needs to say, so much he should explain.

But when she breaks from the hug, and looks up at him with the most genuine, most truly thankful and pitifully  _relieved_  expression he has ever seen on this little girl—

—he can't.

He doesn’t tell her that right now, a spell of that power that would likely be outside his casting ability. He doesn’t tell her that it will probably cost a thousand times more than what the two of them would see in their entire lives.

Instead, he simply nods. He says:

“I promise you this, Nott. We will find that spell. I will help you.”

She gives him a wide, tear-stained smile. “No, Caleb,” she says. “You’ll  _save_  me.”


	2. Luck on Your Side (Molly & Yasha)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In lieu of the latest WILD episode 46 yasha revelations, the next re-upload features soft carnival-era Molly and Yasha:

Yasha traced her fingers over the faded golden letters.

“It’s a book,” Molly explained, grin masking nervousness and trepidation. “It’s, er, it’s about etiquette.”

“Etiquette?” Yasha echoed. “What…is that something important in this country?”

Molly considered this for a moment. “Actually, probably not,” he admitted, “though I'm not exactly the best reference point for what’s usually done around here—“

“—fair point.”

“— _but,_ I think it could be a useful skill if you’ve ever got to deal with non-circus folk! It teaches you how to behave in towns and things, what manners are expected and what to do in social situations. That kind of stuff, you know? It'll probably be useful for when you want to talk to people.”

Yasha frowned. “But why would I want to do that?" she asked. "You handle the speaking always, do you not?”

Molly struggled ti find the proper response. He settled on a question. “You, er, never really communicated with people back home before, have you? Like, you never talked about the weather, or about neighbors or anything?”

She shrugged. “I have not for a long time. And back in the moors, the weather was always bad. The neighbors only slightly better.”

He cracked a smile at that. “Alright, alright, point taken,” he chuckled. “Just promise me you’ll think about it? You never know, etiquette could come in handy one day! Well, it certainly hasn’t for me yet, but that might just be because of…well…just because of how I look, in general.”

She raised a confused eyebrow. “I think you look fine? I see is nothing wrong with you.”

“And that, dear, is why I like you," Molly grinned. "And I'm sure if you apply yourself, everyone else will like you too! Besides, books can be used for other things too, not just reading. You can put stuff between the pages to hold onto.”

“Stuff?” She cocked her head. “What is your meaning?”

Molly quickly glanced around where they sat in the grass, under the shade of the main tent, out of the afternoon sun. His fingers carded across the greenery, trailed through the blankets of clover springing up from the ground below them. Then his eyes lit up when his hand brushed against something tiny and spectacular, and his deft fingers easily broke the stem.

“Like this,” he grinned hugely and held up a little clover. “Look, there’s four leaves! That’s a sign of good luck.”

“Why?”

He pointed at the other little plants growing all around them. “Most of these only have three leaves,” he explained. “But sometimes you’ll find one with four. The odds aren’t great, but you never know. It’s a sign of luck when you do manage to spot one.”

“You must be a very lucky fellow, then,” murmured Yasha. “You found that so quickly.”

He laughed. “That’s a nice thought, isn’t it? At least I’ve got one thing on my side.”

He offered the clover over to his friend. “Here,” he said, "put that in your book. You can keep it for both of us, and maybe we’ll both have a bit more luck in the future!”

She accepted it carefully, cradled the tiny green speck with an almost reverential care between her fingers. She opened the book with her other hand, and delicately placed the clover against the pages beforenuding them shut.

She looked up. “Thank you, Mollymauk."

He waved a cheerful hand. “Think nothing of it, dear.”

They sat there in companionable silence for a few more minutes, watching the clouds roll by in a bright blue sky.

Then Yasha spoke:

“You are wrong,” she said.

He glanced over, confused. “Excuse me?”

Her fingers tapped lightly against the cover of her book. “You are wrong,” she repeated. “I am on your side as well. That is two things.”

He blinked in surprise. Then a small smile crept slow across his face.

“Thank you,” he said.

She nodded. “Think nothing of it, Molly.”

Above them, the lazy clouds drifted on.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading!! More of these will be coming soon, in chronological order, as I slowly upload the tumblr fics (that i like the most) up onto AO3! If you can't wait that long, you can find me [@sockablock on tumblr](https://www.sockablock.tumblr.com), and now on twitter [also as @sockablock](https://twitter.com/sockablock) too! Feel free to drop by, and say hello!
> 
> <333333


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